8 Beers That You Should Stop Drinking Immediately

Many of us choose what we eat very carefully, or at least dedicate our minimum attention to it. But when it comes to drinks, especially alcoholic beverages, we do little to make the best decisions for our health. Which is a HUGE mistake. All the work for your body can be ruined in a weekend out. While foods and non-alcoholic beverages are required to list their ingredients and are monitored by the FDA, beer does not belong in either. The alcohol industry has lobbied for years to avoid labeling its ingredients. Some to protect its recipes, but most – to hide harmful ingredients. Here’s some harmful ingredients that are commonly found in beer:

GMO Corn Syrup

GMO Corn

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Fish Bladder

Propylene Glycol

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

Natural Flavors

GMO Sugars

Caramel Coloring

Insect-Based Dyes

Carrageenan

BPA

& lots more!

Here are the 8 beers that are commonly found in bars in United States that you should stop drinking immediately.

1. Newcastle Brown Ale The Newcastle beer has been found to contain caramel coloring. Class 3 and 4 caramel coloring is made from ammonia, which is classified as a carcinogen. “The one and only” beer with cancer causing qualities.

UPDATE 12/1/2015Newcastle Brown Ale has proactively removed all caramel coloring from its beer. Newcastle now receives its color from natural roasted malts.

2. Budweiser One of the most popular beers, or most advertised is Budweiser. Budweiser contains genetically modified (GMO) corn. In 2007, Greenpeace discovered experimental GMO rice in Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser) beer. 3. Corona Extra I used to love Corona’s commercials. They were so peaceful and relaxing. That is until I found out that the beer contains GMO Corn Syrup and Propylene Glycol. Propylene Glycol is controversial, and is said to may be potentially harmful to your health. 4. Miller Lite This is another very popular beer in America that contains GMOs. Miller Lite contains GMO corn and corn syrup. It’s “GMO time”. 5. Michelob Ultra Less popular but still readily available Michelob beer, should be eliminated from your choices. This beer has been found to contain a genetically modified sweetener (GMO dextrose). 6. Guinness Guinness is often praised for it’s smoothness. However, several investigations proved that Guinness ingredients are quite disturbing. The beer contains fish bladder and high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has been long banned from many stores and drinks. 7. Coors Light Coors light is a drink that is very popular at bars and among college students. Mostly because its cheap. The beer contains GMO corn syrup. 8. Pabst Blue Ribbon Pabst Blue Ribbon contains GMO corn and GMO corn syrup.

Healthy Beer Alternatives

So when it comes to beer you have to be very careful. Your best option is to find a microbrewery that you can trust. As with everything, try to avoid cheap, low-quality products. Bars may offer Coors Light, Miller Lite or Budweiser specials, but they are cheap for a reason. The rest of the world is banning GMOs everywhere, while USA is lagging years behind, and only several states offer GMO labeling laws. Try to stay away from any Mass Marketed American beers. Choose organic beer. Beers that contain 100% organic labels, have to have ingredients that are all 100% organic. While an “organic” label just means 95% of it will be organic. European beer is most likely to be safe from GMO ingredients but unfortunately, most other beer contains GMO artificial ingredients, stabilizers, grains and preservatives, plus, HFCS. GMO Free Beers: Organic Beers (Unpasteurized & Unfiltered)

Wolaver’s – all beers

Lamar Street – Whole Foods label (brewed by Goose Island)

Bison – all beers

Dogfish Head (organic when ingredients available)

Fish Brewery Company – Fish Tale Ales

Lakefront Brewery – Organic ESB

Brooklyn – (organic when ingredients are available)

Pinkus – all beers

Samuel Smiths – Samuel Smiths Organic Ale

Wychwood – Scarecrow Ale

Non-Organic Beers (Unpasteurized & Unfiltered)

Sierra Nevada – all choices

Duck Rabbit – Brown Ale, Porter, Amber Ale, Milk Stout

Dogfish Head- 60 Minute IPA, Shelter Pale Ale, Chicory Stout

Shipyard – Summer Brew

Victory Brewery – Whirlwind

North Coast – Blue Star

Bridgeport – IPA (Bottle conditioned)

Ayinger – all choices

Royal Oak – Pale Ale

Fraziskaner – Hefeweisse and Dunkel Weisse

Weihenstephaner – Hefe Weissbier

Maisel’s – Weisse

Hoegaarden – Belgian Wit

Other

Heineken

Steamwhistle

Amstel Light

Duchy Original Ale Organic

Mill Street Brewery

Fuller’s Organic

Nelson Organic Ale

Natureland Organic

It’s important to expose companies that use harmful ingredients in their products. This information is hidden from the public with millions of dollars of false advertising, laws, etc. You can always vote with your money. As this information about GMO beers spreads, we will see a decrease in production of these beers and the companies may eliminate the harmful ingredients altogether. Most importantly, when you hang out with your friends, you will be able to share beer that’s more delicious and healthier. If you have any additional information about GMO or non-gmo beers, or want to correct some of the information, simply e-mail us or leave a comment with evidence below.

Searching the web has confirmed that Dos Equis uses HFCS, but Tecate uses pure cane sugar. Can anyone else confirm this? I generally stay away from HFCS. I buy bread (orowheat), maple syrup (log cabin) and jelly (smuckers natural preserves) that do not contain HFCS. It won’t kill you but has been shown to be harder for your body to digest, thus making you fat.

Actually, HFCS also turns off your appetite suppressors, which allows you to be continuously hungry. The worst use of HFCS is when it is the first or second ingredient listed (usually indicates the largest quantity of all ingredients), and when it is used in drinks. Specifically stuff like Green Tea and other drinks. If you drink it with your meal, you are more likely to continue eating more than you normally would. HFCS is used because it is cheaper than natural sugar or corn syrup.

Long: There is absolutely nothing wrong with GMO corn or rice. For any original article someone wishes to post by pseudoscientific pages showing the dangers of GMO, I can post a peer reviewed study showing GMOs as just as safe for consumption as any “organic” food.

The same goes for High Fructose Corn Syrup and MSG, the MSG myth was debunked ages ago. HFCS is found to be just as safe (and dangerous) as regular sugar (sucrose).

the whole fish bladder thing confused me for a moment, until I read about vegetarians complaining that using fish bladder extract in the production process “renders it unsuitable” for vegetarian diets. Boohoo

Propylene Glycol. It’s used minutely in beer production. It’s also used in medical vaporizers, topical creams, injectable and oral medications. Large quantities are needed for it to be bad for you (just like beer) and the body metabolizes it with no problem.

Insect based dyes… are you serious? Humans have been using insect based dyes for literally thousands of years. This article is supposedly about the lack of natural ingredients in these “franken-beers” but then use the scare tactic of “bugs in muh brew” to further chase people off. Same as the fish bladder use really.

This is nothing more than an anti-GMO article based upon deliberate misinformation by companies continuing to profit off of the “organic” craze.

Canned albacore tuna has an average of .353 ppm (parts per million) mercury, whereas foods containing HFCS tested only as high as 350 ppt (parts per trillion). The tuna has over 1000 times more mercury than the HFCS.

“A 2009 study found that out of 20 samples of HFCS collected from three separate manufacturers, 11 did not contain detectable levels of mercury (detection limit 0.005 μg mercury/g) while 9 of 20 samples did contain mercury. Eight of the 9 samples containing mercury had levels of mercury ranging from 0.065 μg to 0.570 μg mercury/g HFCS.”

So less than 50% of a study made 5 years ago detected trace mercury in their products, of which that mercury was 1,000 times smaller than an amount found in canned tuna.

Furthermore, more and more HFCS manufactories are switching to using caustic soda produced by a membrane chlor-alkali plant which does not use mercury in its manufacturing process.

Rob I think I love you. Thanks you for sharing the science and factual evidence against what is borderline fear mongering. I was about to explode while reading this article with its irrational fears and misguided information, but then you came along in the comments section and saved the day.

You don’t have any tastebuds, if you are willing to drink that swill. Getting drunk and enjoying a beer are two different things. If you are over 25 you might want to spend the money for some finely crafted ales. Get drunk in style.

Corona beer also contains 8mg per litre fluoride and Guinness Stout 0.6mg/L. Fluoride and alcohol dont mix. The major side effect of ahcohol is lipid peroxidation which causes among other things liver disease. When alcohol is mixed with fluoride lipid peroxidation has been found to ncrease by 110%.

I rarely drink beer mainly because I don’t like its bitter taste and also because of the bad effects it has on he body . I don’t really get why a lot of people love drinking and getting drunk, Being drunk is the worst feeling in the world which is why i don’t understand why people would willingly go through it again and again. I really appreciate that you took the time to expose those beer brands of their harmful effects most of them are really popular ones and since I don’t think that beer drinkers would just suddenly stop drinking them so it’s good that you included healthy alternatives. I really enjoyed reading this post and I’ll definitely share it to my friends and family.

1) There’s a difference between drinking and drinking to get drunk. I usually have no more than one beer in an evening; not enough to get buzzed.
2) Not all beer is bitter. Have a delicious stout. Some are bitter in a coffee-ish way, but many are just chocolaty and sweet! Or try a great Flemish sour. Not bitter, but tart and wine-like. Or any of a variety of un-bitter beers. Belgian Quads? Not bitter. Barleywines? Not bitter. Chimay / Duvel / Fin du Monde? Not bitter.

Please never post something written by Mr. Z ever again. Clicking on his name shows he is a hardcore conspiracy theorist. His recent articles include discoveries of alien moon bases and exorcists’ opinions on Hitler.

I don’t drink beers that have anit-freeze (propylene glycol) in them.
What is wrong about brewing a beer the way it was meant to be brewed? Why the hell do they need to process the shit out of a drink that should be so natural?
Oh ya, profit and huge amounts of profit. Not to mention the spinoffs to the pharmaceutical giants after they mess you up!

I was told about this list, however, due to the inherent intelligence of some people, or lack-there-of. They told me “Heineken”, which is my beer of choice, is a bad beer because it was on this list.

An idea to idiot-proof this list is to instead have a link to a healthy beers page, so lazy people reading the title and looking for the name of a beer aren’t “confused” by the high intelligence required to read the article.

Many brewers use corn sugar which is nearly pure dextrose for finishing fermentation. In the united states, as the name implies, it is likely to be sourced from corn – and thus likely to contain glyphosate, pervasive in the foods we eat as it is the main ingredient in the herbicide roundup.

Sorry, hard to take an article seriously when all the beers they tell you not to drink are from major breweries while of course singing the praises of all micro-brewery beers. To be honest, I call those douche-bag beer articles and immediately dismiss it as rubbish with an agenda. Sam Adams for example, uses corn syrup but not listed

Fair point about Sam, but yeah, you simply shouldn’t be drinking macro beer. I mean, if you want to drink watery lager, drink macros. If you want pink slime, go to McDonalds. This isn’t to say that all micros are good or that all mom-and-pop hamburger joints serve quality burgers, but you’re guaranteed to get garbage whether you’re eating at McD’s or drinking Bud.

I actually doubt that Sam Adams used Corn syrup. Mostly because as a brewer they are not making styles that would benefit. Though maybe on some of the lighter summer beers.

Big beer has 80% – 90% of the market and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. Craft brewers are a lot smarter than this articles author so while I agree with you that it’s rubbish I don’t think Craft breweries would have had anything to do with it.

The other reason would of course be that I seriously doubt that any of them use none of the “big bad” things this silly author is scared about. Everyone is using a clarifying agent, so that is one of two of the Big Bad. Sugar is not uncommon in some styles and dextrose (from corn) is one of the better choices because it ferments out completely and generally works a bit better than some others. ALL beg breweries use Glycol coolers to keep the fermentors stable. I suspect that the authors claim that whatever beer added it was a miss reading of the brewing process and they mistook glycol cooling for a glycol addition. BTW home-brewers that bottle use Dextrose almost exclusively to carbonate the bottles. And BIG brewers of light lager filter the beer to death or pasteurize it.

I would be truly shocked if there were a single brewery of any size that I couldn’t find some scary “chemical” I could claim was in their beer.

Do you have proof GMO corn (or any GMO crop) is bad for human health? That’s amazing because no scientist has as of yet found any truth in these claims…they are nothing but conspiracy theorists lies and baseless accusations. Same as the lie of organically being more nutritious (actually found to be less nutritious) or the lie they don’t use pesticides (in fact they use older more dangerous ones). Also, there isn’t one domesticated crop that ISN’T GMO, every food and animal humans farm is GMO. Even our pets are GMO. There is nothing unhealthy about fish bladders, caramel coloring, or insect based coloring either. And as for sugars (oh GMO sugars, big deal) if you’re drinking alcohol the health detriments of sugar are a far concern.

Well lets be really honest here. GMO is not referring to selective breeding and hybridization. It is referring to altering the DNA directly in ways that can’t be done though breeding. Some GMO products have genes from animals spliced into a plants DNA. Try as you might you are never going to get a frog to breed with a corn cob.

Is it dangerous to eat? Very hard to tell, probably not a lot if at all. But it could take years to actually find out. It is not likely to harmful to YOU, the question is will it be harmful as generations pass. And it certainly COULD be harmful. GMO is used and was originally funded as a way to weapons bugs for biological warfare. It as a science has the potential to be VERY dangerous. So the question really is a multi parter.

First would be are the GMO food products now out there now dangerous. I’m kind of with you in that I haven’t heard anything that would point to a real problem.
Second would be what is being done to oversee that what is being done remains safe? Right now it’s being treated like it’s selective breeding. And even that we know can go wrong (African hybrid bees).

The third would be a discussion about the dangers to the worlds food supply. GMO seeds are patented and the big boys have sued anyone who has a plant even if that plant was not from the manufactured seed. Pollination can spread the GMO DNA to plants that were not GMO and that in the eyes of Big Agra means that now you should have to pay also. The problem for food supply is that at some point you have a virtual monopoly of staple crops by a few large corporations. That is NOT healthy even if the food is fine.

Natural vs. processed? Brewing is a process! Beer is processed grains. Seriously people. This article talks about all the “harmful” substances in beer and NEVER mentions the worst one! CH2CH3OH!!! It’s habit forming. Is responsible for 30,000+ deaths a year in the United States when used with an automobile. Thousands more die annually from overdoses on the substance. It is one of the leading causes of death amongst teenagers in the United States. It seems very silly to me to have a discussion about the harmful effects of the substances a beer contains and never even mention ethanol. By the way, my acupuncturist did a noninvasive quadruple bypass on me last week. I recommend alternative medicine and pseudoscience. It works for me. This article is a joke.

I just read all these comments and I want to jump out a window. I just came to see a list of beers that were non-gmo. Call me crazy, but I like to consume beverages/foods that are made from real unaltered ingredients.

The article is mostly rubbish though most of what he wants me to avoid I would anyway. He also knows nothing about brewing.

So to put some of this in perspective.
“fish bladders” are actually dried fish air bladders. They are floatation bags inside the fish and have nothing to do with what using the term “bladder” implies. Beer does not add Carrageenan it uses “Irish Moss” which is a form of sea weed that also is used to make carrageenan.

But neither of the above is added to the finished beer they are added in the boil to coagulate stuff you don’t want in the beer and are left behind before the wort (un fermented beer) goes to the fermentors.

It’s probable that you might find some trace of their existence in a finished beer, maybe, but it would be an extremely small trace.

GMO. Personally I don’t think they are a good idea but if you consume rice or corn in any form you are almost certainly consuming some GMO product. American Light Lagars, which is all of the big brews, use corn and or rice as a sugar source so they ALL probably use GMO products. The good news is YOU are not eating GMO anything, the yeast is. There is some residual sugar in beer but corn and rice sugar are100% fermentable, that is why they use them. So all of that GMO whatever has been eaten by the yeast and has been turned into alcohol and CO2. Both of which BTW are poisons.

Ammonia in carmel coloring? Maybe, but most carmel coloring I know of comes from caramelizing sugar. The thing is many things have trace amounts of all kinds of elements so? Also many poisonous elements are also necessary in trace amounts. Iodine is very poisonous, but if you don’t get some you develop Rickets.

bottom line is that I wouldn’t drink most of the beers I’m supposed to stay away from because they are not particularly good beers in my opinion not because I think there is any danger in any of these “warnings”.

Bad science, poor research, and no taste in beer.

A valid point they COULD have made is that there is a long list of things allowed to be dumped in your beer and none of it is required to be disclosed. Historically dangerous things have been added to beer, none of those are talked about in this article.

I normally try to stay away from HFCS and GMO stuff in general, however
I’m actually wondering if it really matters if HFCS is used in beers, considering the yeast turns it into alcohol. Would that make it GMO alcohol? I suppose its quite possible that some chemical compounds could be left behind from the GMO after the fructose is consumed by the yeast, but if that’s the case there should be easy enough to prove scientifically.

However, many of the bad effects of the extra high amount of unnatural fructose in HFCS is probably negated in this case since your not consuming it directly. the yeast has already turned it into something probably even more bad for you than the fructose… Alcohol.

And your point about Guinness is? Listen, it does contain issinglass (dried fish bladder) in trace amounts as a NATURALl – NONCHEMICAL – clarifying agent. However, the company has decided to remove this from their product by late 2016 with continuing advances in the brewing process. I don’t really care if Guiness contains Issinglass, or HFCS. The taste is heavenly, incredibly smooth, and always impeccable. And, just something to remember, Guinness still has less calories (125 calories in a 12oz serving) than a glass of orange juice, milk, and many other wildly popular beers.

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